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nightmares

It amazes me of the sheer number of articles and blogs out there related to the study of dreams and recording them. I am happy to say I am not the only one who has become interested in this fascinating exploration activity. Until recently, I thought this was a thing that not many people paid attention to, besides doing research. It turns out that after I started to keep track of my multiple, growing night visions, a new world opened up for me, one that was full of surprises and new discoveries. The idea of lucid dreaming, being aware that you are dreaming and being able to manipulate and alter the course of the dream, is something that I recently struck upon in an article on dreamviews.com

Some of the misconceptions that people have about lucid dreaming are presented. It is not a new thing; it goes back at least a thousand years, the ancient Egyptians even experiencing it, thinking it was a special message from above. You don’t need to rely on God and the Holy Spirit to be lucid as well. Lucid dreaming isn’t really taking you into a new world, it all occurs while you are sleeping and video games are more ‘out of this world’ than your own nightly escapades. I believe I have had a few lucid dreams where I wanted to control the outcome or perhaps extend the dream so I could see what happens next instead of it having a loose end. There was a time when I very interested in the scene going on and the only way for it to continue was for me to take control and add my own spin to the events. There are limitations to this of course. I can only alter what is available and I cannot add anything new to the environment. I can only ‘move’ the character that is essentially me (from my point of view). Now if I was very experienced with lucidity I would be able to control almost anything in the dream but basically the surrounding environment ‘springs up’ randomly wherever I go in the dream. It is nice to see the dream play out on its own, without any interference, but when I really get caught up in it, the events feel like a wild rollercoaster ride that doesn’t seem to want to stop. Sometimes I can actually feel my head and heart pounding from the exhilarating sensations happening in my subconscious. One dream, or perhaps nightmare, that I will explain in a later post, involved me running through a bunch of houses and then seeing my dad sinking into a swamp with rats crawling over him, with me walking ahead in the distance thinking he was just a burden anyway. There also were a few dreams about cancer, one where my uncle told my sister that her friend will “get cancer on your birthday” with no hesitation at all, like it was a solid fact. Another one involved me witnessing a bloody execution and then running out afraid that I was next on the chopping block. I’m not quite sure how all of these dreams come about but it seems to come from how I am thinking at the time, my emotions, and what has happened recently in my life.

If you have been following my dream blog, the dreams I recorded so far are from as far back as November 2013. I am basically going in order of dreams recorded, from the oldest to the most recent entry, fixing up things and making it look polished and complete. I hope to continue to get better at analyzing and making sense of the images and sounds I encounter. Putting all of these wonderful experiences I envision while in the dreamscape into a sort of picture storybook would be the ultimate. It does get a little boring and discouraging when I am not having any new dreams to record but I guess if I start getting quality sleep again I will get back on the amazing run of dreams that I was having in the past. And that had never happened at any time during my teenage years or early childhood. This is a phenomenon that maybe signifies that my brain has evolved or matured to be able to draw upon its own memories to create an interesting world where there are no rules or laws of physics. It is my own personal dreamland and I am free to invite anyone or anything into it, not always on my own accord.

Tonight the amazing dream express transports me through the clouds to a place I am very familiar with – my elementary school at Parma. The school of the blue floors and purple doors as I fondly remember it. Its long hallways and kiddie size rooms still vividly painted onto the back of my retinas…

The mysterious master of disguise that is my subconscious has chosen a particular room to relay events and entertain an unseen audience. Like having a blindfold over my eyes, I suddenly find myself in the kindergarten room, previously taught by a then young Mrs. Comden, and yes that name stirs up many jokes, ones that I didn’t understand when I was little. I am at least five here and am sitting at the table against the back of the big cork board, frequently featuring puzzles in the works, little books full of interesting pictures, and those big, colorful foam letters that motivated me to learn the alphabet. Out of nowhere, a woman hands me a translucent Tupperware container and, to my absolute horror, says it’s cancer. Huh? A dreadful pulse rushes down my back. She peels the lid off the box, revealing what’s inside. Something slimy and a pale milky yellow is slowly moving around. A big greasy blob with bits of hair in it. It gives off a foul odor, like the stench of sick patients in a nursing home. I immediately start to feel nauseous and quite disgusted, barely able to look at the cancerous substance that is right under my nose. I start scraping off the top of the lid with a piece of paper, but what I should have done is push the box away, chuck it across the room, or asked “What the f**k is this, lady?”

After that revolting scene, I suddenly find myself in a huge industrial warehouse with many small rectangular windows, the kind a fast car could easily fly through at any moment to the sweet sound of glass shattering everywhere. The sun is shining brightly through those windows. There are wood boards stacked on platforms around the facility. I am wearing a fake black beard and looking into an unseen camera, trying to act, but not really into it. My sister is also there along with others that I can not identify. I’m not sure what warehouse I am in but I think it’s reminiscent of a scene from Breaking Bad, Top Gun, or Cast Away at the very beginning.